I'll use the ults as an example. For anything under 30, it's press 4 collect loot. For things in the 30-50 range, the ablities affected by armor become sucky while the ones that ignore armor remain press 4 collect loot. This creates a sameness in gameplay which is boring. Without running the numbers or thinking things through I'd suggest:

* Crush destroyed grineer and moas but didn't do much against crewmen/ospreys and infested* Ember's ult did the opposite, both have a falloff over radius so positioning matters

As someone who has both Mag and Ember, I can say that World on Fire is distinct from other ultimates in that it has a channel time and a limited number of targets (while it has a nice radius at max it can only affect 3 enemies at a time; it does so little damage to "all these guys around me" that I do not even bother running it, Fire Blast is a more useful "oh shit" button though Ember's usual response to being surrounded is to just die). Crush is more like the other ultimates.

At the moment I find myself constrained most heavily by mods. It takes a fuckton to push a mod above 5-6 as seems to be necessary for key damage/health/shield mods, and meanwhile instead of cores or more of the mods I am trying to improve all I seem to be getting are piles of Ghost/Crowd Dispersion.

Yeah, the gunplay in ME3MP finally ended up being really good with starting with mainly the N7 Classes and balances around that time, what made me think this is more fun is that while you cant farm everything, you can farm things more focused instead of just farming money and then buying and praying to the rng(if you discount the uninstall all but the one you want dlc method).

I really hope this game will continue to build on and go forward, because the foundation is pretty darn good right now.

As someone who has both Mag and Ember, I can say that World on Fire is distinct from other ultimates in that it has a channel time and a limited number of targets (while it has a nice radius at max it can only affect 3 enemies at a time; it does so little damage to "all these guys around me" that I do not even bother running it, Fire Blast is a more useful "oh shit" button

My ember isn't finished cooking but I knew about the limitation. I pulled it in because I think there's clearly pressure to make it more like the other abilities listed so that it's "good". My imagined design timeline of the frames:

* Ember - "Lots of damage" moves so the ult is target limited* Volt - "Lots of damage" but ult is situational according to terrain* Mag - kills everything, only damage move on an otherwise support set

Then you move on to the target limited set (Why 13 targets? Is that really a limit? The power of the moves make sense with a 2/3/4 limit in context of the initial set):

* Frost - Kill all the things (he's awesome without it, why does he need a kill all the things move)

In update 7:

* Saryn - Kill all the things AND armor ignore and boosted by all the mods but make it take 4 seconds for balance!* Banshee - Kill all the things in an enormous radius AND pick up things coming in, but make it affected by armor for balance!

My imagined narrative is that Ember and Volt's ults were good/interesting when designed. Then they did Mag and found her ult awesome (it is). They balanced up the target limited stuff because they liked how awesome Mag's ult was but didn't want to put too much damage on the damage frames. They then damage and cost normalized the ults for "balance". From there it's classic power creep. Take helmets. I'm pretty sure those were designed after the frames and they're like "Mag's ult is looking weak, let's give her range" and so on.

The list in my last post was my attempt at throwing together a quick balance change example to get the ults feeling different and more equal without redesigning things from scratch.

At the moment I find myself constrained most heavily by mods. It takes a fuckton to push a mod above 5-6 as seems to be necessary for key damage/health/shield mods, and meanwhile instead of cores or more of the mods I am trying to improve all I seem to be getting are piles of Ghost/Crowd Dispersion.

Mods are priced exponentially by rank. Going from rank 9 to rank 10 for the 10 step mods will require between ~200-300 fusion cores and cost in the 400k credits range. The nice thing about Melee and Shotgun is that you can reasonably max out all your mods. Because there's no mod sink, once you put like 150-200ish hours, I believe you'll have maxed out all mods and your gear progression will essentially stop except for Redirection, Serration, and Hornet Strike plus new weapon releases. That's why I mention the mod exceptions in my previous post. I only mentioned gameplay in my previous post, but the lack of a mod sink concerns me. I'm also concerned about how the prestige system will impact weapon differentiation.

None of this currently matters. Game is fun. I'm just worrying fairly typical theorycrafter worries. It's what I do when I'm on the subway and whatnot.

I quit fairly early; They hadn't even released their 'mea culpa' half-fix for their shoddy ending yet. The weapons were all underpowered, and it was all about the biotic explosion. Everything else was just killing fodder and waiting to be able to cycle the power again. By now I have no interest in going back.

I like the feeling of being an overpowered badass compared to my enemies. I like that it takes sheer numbers to overwhelm me, or a mistake in the way I'm playing. I do think perhaps energy orbs drop like candy out of a pinata, especially on defense missions, and that there's no real end-game content yet so there's a lot of placeholding.

I feel like we're still firmly in beta with the game. The developers are still actively listening and adjusting based on community feedback. I like that their focus is on PvE and that balance will be for that. I don't spam my powers, and frankly I don't see it used often except in defense missions.

So our tastes are different. What you're looking for must differ from what I am, and Warframe is going in the right direction for me. I do think some of the lesser used frames need to be more empowered, and the lesser used frame abilities strengthened.

I'm not a fan of nerfing.

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The biggest deal with mods is that the number necessary to increase in rank increases exponentially. Credits flow like water, so that's not such a big deal. Going from rank 9 to rank 10 requires 512 of the same mod card. That's a lot of freaking mods. Fusion cores help, but they're not going to get you that far unless you have a huge amount of them.

Most people are going to be much lower, and that's fine. For me I generally find that I have trouble with having enough slots for the different mods I want; I want sheilds and vitality, shield regen and armor, stamina and max speed, and stamina regen. That's 7 of 10 slots on a warframe. I'll usually want at least one ability, sometimes more, but generally I'm finding that the polarity intended to get you to put the warframe abilities on the frame makes me use up more power than necessary so I can actually carry the mods I want. I want to survive and I want to move quicker. I don't care much about throwing a lightning bolt that hardly harms the target and doesn't pass through.

So on Excalibur I only carry slash-dash. Not because it's OP, but because it's useful and it frees up slots, even at a polarity cost. And I rarely use slash-dash.

But I pretty much universally use the energy siphon artifact, so there is that, and endless defense missions become impossible without using the OP AoE powers later.

And the general sense I get, playing missions with pubbies and ArsTenno players, is that most people prefer to use melee and their guns. They save their powers for emergency situations or bosses.

* Ash's ult would be targeted per jump with a brief timing window per jump, you fail your target, you drop the rest of the chain.

I like the ult changes, especially this one. I normally eat something or alt-tab after I cast Bladestorm. This would actually give me something ninja-like to do while it's going off, and I could stop cursing their target selection algorithm.

Quote:

If I were designing this game, the law of stormtrooper accuracy would absolutely be in play and be dependent on current player movement speed/wall running/flipping out/etc, enemies (grineer mainly) would have separate shooting and movement turn rates and the slower physical turning would be noticeably slower so you could circle strafe stab them, a toned down version of the Devil May Cry weapons (but not the stupid guitar) would be the reference point for melee, you'd have X:Men Legends style over the top flaming punching fists from 3m out, etc.

DMC is exactly where I'd like melee combat to head. It's pretty timing based though... with P2P hosting I think they'd have to pick between loose timings and letting the "server" check or tight ones and trusting the client.

Quote:

It's a sort of meta-competition between me and the game designer. I find a hole in the mechanics and get to feel clever about it and they get to patch them. With single player games, there is no patching so I break the system and it remains broken while with multiplayer games there's a back and forth. The game designers can win by designing a particularly clever system.

I'm my MMO days we roguishly called that philosophy, "Exploit early, exploit often." Served its purpose a little too well in Star Wars Galaxies... that game was a tinkerer's playground, if only because of how sprawling and unpolished it was.

I want sheilds and vitality, shield regen and armor, stamina and max speed, and stamina regen. That's 7 of 10 slots on a warframe.

My core set is Streamline, Redirection, Rush. I find the health related ones to be completely unnecessary except possibly on infested missions due to disruptors. For balance it's not that we want different things, it's more that I'm looking ahead and think there will be problems.

My Ember finished. The frame looks like a chicken. The head frill, the feet, the colors all say chicken to me. Frame is still low level but I have my core abilities on plus overheat. Overheat makes you super tanky. Did a lot of Van Hek runs face tanking Van Hek, got the trinity blueprints along with 10 neurodes (a LOT of runs) so that will go once I get the rubedo. Best thing about overheat is that it kills rollers.

DMC is exactly where I'd like melee combat to head. It's pretty timing based though... with P2P hosting I think they'd have to pick between loose timings and letting the "server" check or tight ones and trusting the client.

I'd trust the client for the timing info and verify that the timing is possible. DMC type combos aren't fixed timing so macroing is hard and you could technically write a bot but there's no particular benefit for doing so.

I want sheilds and vitality, shield regen and armor, stamina and max speed, and stamina regen. That's 7 of 10 slots on a warframe.

My core set is Streamline, Redirection, Rush. I find the health related ones to be completely unnecessary except possibly on infested missions due to disruptors. For balance it's not that we want different things, it's more that I'm looking ahead and think there will be problems.

My Ember finished. The frame looks like a chicken. The head frill, the feet, the colors all say chicken to me. Frame is still low level but I have my core abilities on plus overheat. Overheat makes you super tanky. Did a lot of Van Hek runs face tanking Van Hek, got the trinity blueprints along with 10 neurodes (a LOT of runs) so that will go once I get the rubedo. Best thing about overheat is that it kills rollers.

DMC is exactly where I'd like melee combat to head. It's pretty timing based though... with P2P hosting I think they'd have to pick between loose timings and letting the "server" check or tight ones and trusting the client.

I'd trust the client for the timing info and verify that the timing is possible. DMC type combos aren't fixed timing so macroing is hard and you could technically write a bot but there's no particular benefit for doing so.

If you need a lot of Rubedo just go to Pluto. Th defense missions there drops a lot, I have around 3k of the stuff from playing there

This is gonna be a fun weekend. When I get home tonight I have a fresh start with level 0 rhino, boltor, akbolto and gram thats gonna go to venus for some bambi-leveling / farming alloy.

And I still have 2 levels left on the hek and skana prime to get through and another 8 levels on my trinity. I also have a volt cooking in the foundry while I farm more neurodes and alloy and try to get the normal banshee helmet. After that i'm going banshee. I already have all parts except the standard helmet part, even got the special helmet in the alert a couple of days ago. Been thinking of farming some ember and nyx parts too and opening up the rest of the maps, but the bad thing with that is that I don't get the right mats in the process...

Excalibur: all around good. Not especially good at anything, though pretty handy in areas where you can force the enemy into a long string for slash-dash. I almost never see the other abilities used, and only used them myself to try them out. Good overall health, shields, armor, and speed. Very common.

Volt: Good AoE attack. Shield and health are ok, speed is ok but not quite as good as Excalibur (at least to me). The other abilities besides the AoE kind of suck; speed can be useful for catching up or going back quickly, but mostly it's used for doing tricks you couldn't do without the massive speedboost or by people who want to rush the whole map.

Trinity: Good shields and health, very power dependent. All of it's powers are useful, but I really only used Link and it's ultimate heal ability. Pretty slow, ugly lobster tail is annoying.

Rhino: Slower than dirt. Great armor, good shields and health. This is your typical tank. The powers are decent; charge is a weaker slash-dash that kills weak stuff and knocks down the other stuff. Iron skin makes you invincible from everything and is generally considered one of the best powers in the game, but I mostly found it to be too limited to use regularly. Radial blast does damage in a small AoE, while rhino stomp just stuns and knocks enemies over. Not really my cup of tea because of how slow a frame it is; even when running it's barely faster than the other frames walking.

Next up: Banshee. This is supposed to have a really good AoE attack, and seems to be a favorite in defense missions where the enemies cluster because of that.

1. Make sure you have a decent pair of shield/health cards2. Charge straight at boss, get boss aggro3. When you're sure you have said aggro, link boss. No sense wasting duration if he's not on you yet.4. Batter up with melee5. Relink when necessary6. Splat

Even so, Ash is still my favourite. Most missions I run through without touching any powers at all.

The best general purpose secondary weapon available, bar none. Some things are better in their niche, sure, but nothing does "I need a weapon and I don't know which one" and then murders shit dead like AkBoltos.

Youre welcome Workaround, but I think most of the credit has to go to Grendel considering he talked me into getting my set of akboltos too not soo long ago

After our runs tonight tonight, I got my rhino up to from a virginframe up to lvl 16, and the Boltor and Akboltos and Gram at level 22/22 and 18. So pretty good amount of XP for all of us. After the other runs today Inez and I took a few lasts missions unlocking a bit more of ceres for me, among those the Boss that are supposed to drop frost parts. Rhino is a good tank. And with a Trinity for support that healed and put a Power link on the boss, I could just stand there, facetank, and pop the Rhino Stomp which would just disrupt the boss for a good while, rinse and repeat, making it a walk in the park.

So the more I come to play this game, the more synnergy I find there is with the right matches. I still really want to tryout the mag's bullet attractor with the Excaliburs major ability though.

The best general purpose secondary weapon available, bar none. Some things are better in their niche, sure, but nothing does "I need a weapon and I don't know which one" and then murders shit dead like AkBoltos.

The best general purpose secondary weapon available, bar none. Some things are better in their niche, sure, but nothing does "I need a weapon and I don't know which one" and then murders shit dead like AkBoltos.

Grendel should be in advertising

Not so sure about that. Me thinks he can work in advertising with people who are use to "salty" language.

So I'm in a Kiste defense mission. Split Chamber drops and I'm super excited. We fail the third part. Turns out there were only three of us and we we started the third part and one of them dies with about 20s to go. I am dissapoint. I was in a Rhino since I'm leveling it (meh frame). Would have made it if I was on the Mag.

Grayrest, I also failed my first try at that mission when I went with pubbies, it was me and another guy that were the only ones that cared about the pod, the other two just ran away. Lost a ton of good mods. Then I did the same mission with the guys here and it couldn't have been easier. And while I like the rhino, it's mobility is a hindrance in trying to "solo" defense and mobile defense.

On that note, I talked a bit about it on TS today, but I don't care if people are crying that the rhino got nerfed, It's still a huge tank. I just plain soloed the whole ceres and eris system with another few alerts to boot.

Ceres straight through so all missions are done, and Eris so everything is unlocked, but not done. Only one single time in all those missions did I actually come even remotely close to dying, and that was when crowded by triple ancients that combined poison and disruptors and a bunch of other stuff while carrying some intel around. With a 25% speed mod, the rhino has easily become my solo go-to character while leveling it. I'm going to try to switch it back to the ash when the rhino is at 30, but right now, the rhino is near invincible, despite the nerf so he isn't literally invincible anymore. Only missions he cant really solo are defense, because it's to widespread on the cave/reactor map. I would call him a grown up Excalibur at this point, fatter, slower, more powerful and way more durable. And I still have another 6 levels to earn on him before he hits 30 so...

Even got joined by a bunch of pubbies because I don't put it to private, and of course, they are pubbies, but even the faster frames can keep up with the rhino. I bet some well played fast frames would of course, but in pubbie land, they are left in the dust. Although I happened on one group of great pubbies, among those another rhino that kept equal pace, so we just flew through like 4 missions in somewhere 25ish minutes give or take a few because I actually didn't look at the clock.

I did Ceres while leveling my Volt. I haven't done all of Eris yet, but I am leveling my Excalibur prime now.

With the right weapons, it doesn't really matter what frame you're in for most things; you can make it work because you can kill all competition quickly and easily. A well modded Boltor will shread those ancients. But that's a ton of lost xp that could have been put into leveling other weapons to increase mastery (which is the reason I don't go around everywhere with my Scindo, Boltor, and Akboltos).

The nerf to Rhino doesn't make IS useless, it just makes it less useful than other frames. Ember's Overheat, with a good focus mod, can get you to 91% damage reduction. Ember is an, albeit weak, DPS frame. It's powers are centered around damaging enemies, yet it tanks better than Rhino now? And Trinity, the support frame, is the best tank in the game? Frost at least was already a defensive tank, even if it's superior in every way to Rhino at this point.

The other abilities on the Rhino frame just don't work well. Charge glitches a lot; you know how Slash Dash sometimes gets caught on walls or boxes and stops? Charge does that on enemies and steps and invisible pieces of dust. And it doesn't do much damage, so it only kills enemies on very low level, which means they get up behind you while you're being pounded on from the front because rather than knocking them down, your charge got stopped by the enemy you charged at. Radial Blast? It does less damage than my Scindo's jumping ground attack, and it has a smaller radius. Sure, it can knock some enemies down, but chances are my Scindo would have killed them instead. And the stomp? Forget it. Even maxed out, the thing just knocks stuff in the air for less than 10 seconds. Almost all the other frame's ultimate abilities kill, usually large amounts of enemies, but they're all more effective.

And that's why people complain about the Rhino. You can still play it; it's still got excellent health and shields, and great starting armor so that it's worth while to have a great steel fiber mod (as another point, you can get more damage reduction to health with steel fiber than with Iron Skin now, which is a joke), but the frame is slow. That doesn't just translate into the annoyance of having to constantly slide jump to keep up, but it also means when the shit hits the fan, you can't get out of the way (like a bunch of disruptors/toxic ancients). And since Iron Skin doesn't protect you from disruption or poison anymore, you can count on having no shields, no energy for IS when it falls, and depleting health while being knocked down constantly.

I understand that the problem was people could mod in such a way that they could keep IS up nearly indefinitely; that is a problem. A reduction in the time you were invulnerable or an increase in the energy cost would have solved this problem. Reducing it's usefulness doesn't solve THAT particular problem, it just makes the frame less useful.

The developers have already said they're going to look at the Rhino and Banshee nerfs again and probably reduce them; to what no one knows. Right now, I wouldn't worry so much about it; you can still level Rhino, it just likely won't end up being the frame you love.

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The same patch also massively increased the cost of weapons in the market for new players, making most of them into blueprints that the new player will have to spend lots of time collecting our favorite ALLOY PLATE to make. There's a conspiracy theory that the nerfs to Rhino and Banshee were all about covering this change up so that the community skimmed over it; I don't really believe that. I do think it'll hurt Warframe in the long run if new players find it difficult to get new weapons. A Strun, for example, now costs 75000 credits. It took me forever to save up and buy a Latron when I first did it at 50k, now you have to buy a BP at I believe half that, and get the parts to make it.

Or buy it with Platinum. Time to push the cash shop I guess. Really makes that reset look unappetizing though.

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No Voubon parts have come up yet, of course. If they're as common as Glaive BP then we should see one part this week, maybe 2. All we've been told is that they're more common that Catalysts and Reactors, but I don't think that's saying much.

There were some really good things in the patch; there cameras now show a beam of white or red light so you can see them (and also see which way they're looking, though they look at more than what the beam shows). You can go into your gameplay options and set a maximum ping for joining/allowing join to coop missions; I'm not sure this is the most effective thing since Warframe seems to be more dependent on having adequate bandwidth and computing resources to host, but it's something. There are lots of other fixes, like letting the glaive have Critical hits when thrown now (though it still doesn't do elemental damage when thrown, evidently).

The same patch also massively increased the cost of weapons in the market for new players, making most of them into blueprints that the new player will have to spend lots of time collecting our favorite ALLOY PLATE to make. There's a conspiracy theory that the nerfs to Rhino and Banshee were all about covering this change up so that the community skimmed over it; I don't really believe that. I do think it'll hurt Warframe in the long run if new players find it difficult to get new weapons.

I'm not sure if new players are still a significant factor. People like me have been enthusiastic about this game since the first trailer and have been playing it since the closed beta. The wider audience saw this game on Steam two months ago. And it's standing out in terms of aesthetics, so if didn't catch their attention in two months, it's probably not for them. And most players from the existing community already have the weapons they want - hence no outrage.

The real issue with expensive weapons is when you spend a lot of time and resources - and don't like the result. It can be unpleasant, especially for new players. On the other hand, the alert system is much more useful for new players - you're much more likely to get something you don't have.

I think the bigger issue is that the gameplay is getting old and I'm not sure if they can freshen it up with updates. And they need to keep the game interesting for a long time if they want to push the cash shop.

Also, what is it with Vauban's eyes? They give him a derpy look. I hope the alternative helmet is more symmetric.

The real issue with expensive weapons is when you spend a lot of time and resources - and don't like the result. It can be unpleasant, especially for new players. On the other hand, the alert system is much more useful for new players - you're much more likely to get something you don't have.

I think the bigger issue is that the gameplay is getting old and I'm not sure if they can freshen it up with updates. And they need to keep the game interesting for a long time if they want to push the cash shop.

There's a lot they can do once they've gotten balance and bugs worked out. I can think of half a dozen game types they don't have that would be fun. Also with the card-based mod system adding new powers to existing frames is certainly something that could freshen the game up. The synergy between classes in ME3 was one of the things that made that multiplayer so fun. I could see them adding additional frame-specific powers to every frame that let you combo with each other. My Loki stealths and sets up a stun, your rhino charges and detonates it, that kind of thing.

Workaround: Unlocking system maps allows you a greater chance of being able to do an alert mission; the more you have available, the more you can respond to. That's important for getting those blueprints and artifacts and other things that are alert only or alert/platinum only.

Otherwise, defense missions are great for farming mods (The wiki tells you what type of enemy is likely to yeild a certain mod, so if you want that mod, fight that enemy), and the mobile defense missions are great for farming mods and getting lots of experience, but they're significantly harder IMO.

Unfortunately, there's no guaranteed way to get a rare mod of a particular type; I've got most of mine since they fixed the RNG for mod drops to actually use the rarity through higher level defense missions (they're more likely to drop from higher level enemies) but you could get them clearing out Eris and Pluto as well. Boss runs are generally for farming blueprints or materials, though defense missions are often used for materials as well.

I do like to run Raid missions because you're guaranteed a mod, but it's usually a common mod like ammo drum or slip magazine or something like that. Occasionally they end up useful. They could be a Banshee blueprint part, so I would also farm them. Many times that's the only mod I get, though. Rewards at the current time do not scale with difficulty; you're as likely to get a rare mod from a raid on Venus as you are on Pluto. But drops from killing enemies DO scale with difficulty, so harder missions generally mean more uncommmon and rare mods, which is why it's not always optimal to quit at 5 on a defense mission, even though you're not likely to get a better reward at 15 than you are at 5. The mods you get off the ground tend to be better the higher up you go. If you're just farming for materials, though, quitting at 5 makes sense, because those come equally (usually out of the loot barrels or closets) and the faster you quit is the faster you can queue up the next mission and try again. So if you're farming Alloy plate on Venus, quit out on 5 on the defense missions instead of dragging it out; you've likely got most of the alloy plate you're going to get by then.

Squrf: Feel free to join up with Ars Tenno. I'm sure we could find time to drag you around and get you mods to help, and with that many fusion cores, you'll really just need one base mod card to get started. The wiki can really help you determine what mods you want most and where to get them (i.e. split chamber from grineer) so I recommend taking a look at it. Most of us are often just doing whatever anyone wants because we're just leveling frames or weapons, and I could always use more mods. I had hoped that with the Clan Dojo's as part of update 8 (hopefully by Wednesday this week!) we'd be able to trade mods or blueprints, but it looks like the only thing we'll be able to trade is credits and materials, and frankly credits mean less and less every day and with every change DE makes.

Frosty Grin: The patch notes make note of something called a 'Super Moa' but it evidently is something different than the Fusion moa. I'm pretty excited to see it. The extermination event for the Fusion Moa was fun and with similar things like that, I think the game has some longevity. I don't know if people will keep playing it nightly like I do, especially if they've got all the frames and weapons and the rest of the content gets locked behind a virtual paywall (I don't think Voubon will be common enough for anyone to have one without paying Platinum for it anytime soon). With Update 8 will come at least one other system, including 'orokin' tilesets that will give prime frames special powers and allow it to also assist the whole team with something (details don't exist), as well as access to the Frost Prime part blueprints, plus the clan dojo (including a PvP dueling room), and a new tileset for the grineer to replace their stolen spaceship set that comes from the Corpus tileset. There is also supposed to be a hint in it over another faction, but I don't know much about that as it's only briefly hinted at in the last livestream, #5. Throwing knives are supposed to show up (there's some art showing Voubon holding some as well) to be a silent secondary weapon so you can do all thrown silent weapons, hints at a scythe, Prime weapons, mentions of a spear... more mods of course (including some for the sentinels, as well as more sentinels). I don't think content is going to be this game's problem. I do think at some point there needs to be more of an overarching goal than just collecting more shit as fast as possible. Maybe some sort of long-term push against a bigger enemy that you can push off maps or risk them spreading, or some sort of major goal besides clearing all the maps, killing all the bosses, and getting all the loot. But I think they can, and will, do it. I'm going to be patient with them.

I just hope they don't keep going down the Diablo 3 path, nerf everything then think of complex ways to try and make it up.

Most people say yes; I don't have one. It's got better range than a boar, but a smaller magazine and a much slower fire rate.

The boar is difficult to use well, IMO. IT simply fires too fast and does too little damage, though I was using it mostly on Grineer which is a mistake.

The strun has a high amount of damage, and a reasonable spread (smaller than the Boar, larger than the Hek). It has a slow reload and a small magazine. Critical chance on shotguns is computed per pellet, so even though the %chance is 7.5 on base, you can increase that 90% to 14.25% maximum, per pellet. Base crit damage is 150%, and you can increase that 60%, and because crit chance is per pellet and not per shot fired, you're guaranteed that damage, but only on those pellets that crit.

On top of that, the Hell's Chamber mod, which increased the chance of additional free shots, works per pellet. So if you have it maxed out at 120%, it fires 120% more pellets per shot, ever shot, rather than split chamber on a rifle which occasionally fires a second shot, depending on the percentage.

That said, shotguns have trouble against armored targets, so you need Armor Piercing damage for a shotgun if you want to do much to Grineer or other armored targets. There's no armor ignore and the shotguns feel really weak against even low level grineer. The mods are completely seperate for it even thought they come up as primary weapon mods, so you have a fresh set of mods to rank, which is both good and bad. You don't have to take mods from your rifles for it, but you can't use mods from your rifles for it either.

I liked the Boar ok, and the Hek was pretty good. The big advantage, to me, in shotguns is that you don't have to aim so precisely, and that they do a lot of base damage right off the bat, so ranking up their damage can make them devistating.

They also now lose damage over distance; the hek less than the strun less than the boar. That makes them into relatively short-range weapons. Not a big deal on most missions but a pain on some defense missions where the distance is great enough to see it.

In all honesty, if you're close to Mastery level 4, I'd ignore the strun and wait until you can get a Hek. It's just a better weapon overall, even if the rate of fire is low and the magazine tiny and the reload speed long. It does great damage at a reasonable distance and it's easy to keep your total ammo up because of how economical it is with ammo consumption for damage. It does take some mods to make it worthwhile, of course.

The strun is probably the Latron of shotguns; not a fast fire rate but not ridiculously slow; good per damage shot, probably not great dps overall compared to other weapons. It's good in that it can one-shot lots of enemies because of it's high base damage. IT was also good because it was available early on; now it's so expensive that I'd question it's availability to new players.

I'd certainly say this, though. The boar is not a good weapon. As much damage as you'd expect out of a full-auto shotgun with a 10 round mag, I often have to put three or four rounds into something that a strun would have one-shot. It eats up too much ammo for the damage it does, which is weaker per pellet than the Strun. I would say give it a pass, it was already ineffective as anything but a short-range weapon and now it's almost entirely useless outside melee range, and frankly melee is more damaging, faster, and doesn't require ammo or reloads. It's a pointless weapon.

Most people say yes; I don't have one. It's got better range than a boar, but a smaller magazine and a much slower fire rate.

The boar is difficult to use well, IMO. IT simply fires too fast and does too little damage, though I was using it mostly on Grineer which is a mistake.

The strun has a high amount of damage, and a reasonable spread (smaller than the Boar, larger than the Hek). It has a slow reload and a small magazine. Critical chance on shotguns is computed per pellet, so even though the %chance is 7.5 on base, you can increase that 90% to 14.25% maximum, per pellet. Base crit damage is 150%, and you can increase that 60%, and because crit chance is per pellet and not per shot fired, you're guaranteed that damage, but only on those pellets that crit.

On top of that, the Hell's Chamber mod, which increased the chance of additional free shots, works per pellet. So if you have it maxed out at 120%, it fires 120% more pellets per shot, ever shot, rather than split chamber on a rifle which occasionally fires a second shot, depending on the percentage.

That said, shotguns have trouble against armored targets, so you need Armor Piercing damage for a shotgun if you want to do much to Grineer or other armored targets. There's no armor ignore and the shotguns feel really weak against even low level grineer. The mods are completely seperate for it even thought they come up as primary weapon mods, so you have a fresh set of mods to rank, which is both good and bad. You don't have to take mods from your rifles for it, but you can't use mods from your rifles for it either.

I liked the Boar ok, and the Hek was pretty good. The big advantage, to me, in shotguns is that you don't have to aim so precisely, and that they do a lot of base damage right off the bat, so ranking up their damage can make them devistating.

They also now lose damage over distance; the hek less than the strun less than the boar. That makes them into relatively short-range weapons. Not a big deal on most missions but a pain on some defense missions where the distance is great enough to see it.

In all honesty, if you're close to Mastery level 4, I'd ignore the strun and wait until you can get a Hek. It's just a better weapon overall, even if the rate of fire is low and the magazine tiny and the reload speed long. It does great damage at a reasonable distance and it's easy to keep your total ammo up because of how economical it is with ammo consumption for damage. It does take some mods to make it worthwhile, of course.

The strun is probably the Latron of shotguns; not a fast fire rate but not ridiculously slow; good per damage shot, probably not great dps overall compared to other weapons. It's good in that it can one-shot lots of enemies because of it's high base damage. IT was also good because it was available early on; now it's so expensive that I'd question it's availability to new players.

I'd certainly say this, though. The boar is not a good weapon. As much damage as you'd expect out of a full-auto shotgun with a 10 round mag, I often have to put three or four rounds into something that a strun would have one-shot. It eats up too much ammo for the damage it does, which is weaker per pellet than the Strun. I would say give it a pass, it was already ineffective as anything but a short-range weapon and now it's almost entirely useless outside melee range, and frankly melee is more damaging, faster, and doesn't require ammo or reloads. It's a pointless weapon.

Heh, that's quite an answer. I'm nowhere near mastery 4 (halfway between 1 and 2) and I have way more credits than blueprints and materials, so I may still try the strun.

My thought is to try out the Loki with the Dual Ether/Lex/Shotgun/combo. While the Loki is kind of squishy, it's very fast, and when you're stealthed on the loki you are essentially immune to damage - while you can still catch incidental fire you get completely ignored. Even if you're solo the mobs immediately drop aggro and run back to cover, or else just stand there confused.

It also seems to have a much higher base energy level than my Excalibur; when I slot energy mods into it, I can get over 300 energy. I have invisibility upgraded to 12 seconds, and decoy double-ugraded. 5 seconds of decoy into 12 seconds of invis means I can do a ton of damage in packs of baddies without taking much damage. I'm envisioning dual ethers with fire mods on them just shredding the infested, with a shotgun for 10-feet-away blasting of tough mobs.

Heh, that's quite an answer. I'm nowhere near mastery 4 (halfway between 1 and 2) and I have way more credits than blueprints and materials, so I may still try the strun.

Most of the comparisons of Strun vs Hek are that they're pretty close. I was planning on picking up the Strun but they upped the prices and I'm short on credits due to having 4 warframes cooking.

As to your Loki setup, should work fine. I mostly did melee when leveling the frame and now I mostly use him for Raid farming which is mainly about spamming decoy and running really fast. The only thing I wouldn't melee are Toxic Ancients and for sustained armor damage I like the Boltor and would recommend that if you have ~500 alloy plate. The shotguns are okay at sustained damage but not great. They are very nice for burst damage. If you have a decent level Flechette you can burn through Kiste mobs easily.

The nice thing about Melee/Shotguns is that it's relatively easy to max out the weapons since there aren't any Rank 10 mods. I'm like 3 ranks from maxing out the Melee (modulo Sundering Strike, which I have not seen) and am about 3/4 through shotguns (modulo Hells Chamber, which I have not seen).

If you are close to getting the Hek, that's the way to go, but if you aren't, I thought strun was very much worth it. It fits my playstyle much better then the Boar would, which I skipped in favor of the Hek, despite hearing somebody manically giggling on teamspeak every time they fired the Boar.

I played ash a whole lot with the Strun, so for me, it's a fast frame with good melee and lex for long-range you can easily make it work. The trick is to run up to somebody, shoot them in the head with the strun, and if they aren't dead, quick melee. And leveled a bit it will one-shoot most mooks up to a certain level without any trouble.

What the Strun requires to be effective though is, one ammo mod which raises the mag rate to 8 or 9, that seriously helps take annoyance away from the reload speed and helps you for the enemies that need a second helping of pellets or groups of more then 5 enemies. The second one is that you need more base damage and armor piercing damage. I have my Strun non potatoed fully leveled, and up until lvl 20 enemies or thereabouts, I just aim for the head and bam, dead. And since you also have stealth, you have a good chance of getting right up into somebody's face before firing, which is a good thing, and if not, snipe from far away with the lex.

If you want to I can easily equip that combo and go a few rounds with mods at a "normal" leveling standard so you can see how it plays for somebody else before you go for it.

I really wish you could farm for Hell's chamber, because that is one mod I'm missing that I really would love to have. Have both my rifle and pistol at 75% and 100% respectively.

On a side note, the Boltor with, 75% Multishot, 50% Fire rate, 75% Damage, 60% Piercing, 75% Fire, just tears through most stuff like they weren't even there. In all honesty, part of why my rhino never have to slow down is because I just pull the trigger and hose an angle over where the enemies come from. If anybody is still alive when I need a reload, that's where the "weak" charge ability or gram melee comes in. The worst things are the ancients which actually manage to actually survive for like two seconds being staked before they die.

I really wish you could farm for Hell's chamber, because that is one mod I'm missing that I really would love to have. Have both my rifle and pistol at 75% and 100% respectively.

On a side note, the Boltor with, 75% Multishot, 50% Fire rate, 75% Damage, 60% Piercing, 75% Fire, just tears through most stuff like they weren't even there. In all honesty, part of why my rhino never have to slow down is because I just pull the trigger and hose an angle over where the enemies come from. If anybody is still alive when I need a reload, that's where the "weak" charge ability or gram melee comes in. The worst things are the ancients which actually manage to actually survive for like two seconds being staked before they die.

I think you can *try* to farm it. It's a grineer drop so do high-level grineer defense mission runs.

And I completely agree on the Boltor. Modded out it's wicked, and because it's naturally armor ignore, you do 100% normal damage to everything, at least, which murders pretty much anything. And it staggers grineer targets. It's an awesome weapon, even with it's damage reduced and it's fire rate lowered. I also like a reload speed mod, but that's not strictly necessary.

As a Rhino I rarely used any of my abilities, Iron Skin included. I just didn't need to much, and when I did they were mostly unnecessary or they didn't help. With a fully upgraded Boltor, I could pretty much run almost any frame and do fine. There's no need to tank, everything dies so fast it hardly ever gets a chance to hurt you.

Workaround - Personally I think the Strun is easily worth it based on my playstyle, so think about it or just go for it, we can always farm more resources. Not to mention you don't want to waste time working on weapons to get more mastery points so you can get to Mastery 4 and get the Hek.

Just page me the next time you see me online and we can go for a spin with the Strun though.

Vampyre - Yeah, either a mag-capacity, or a reload speed mod is something I'm gonna try to sqeeze on that boltor when it's maxed out. Probably fusioning something to fill the last points to max.

Well, need Thunderbolt and Hells Chamber and Banshee helmet, so I guess defense is whats left for me to farm. Preferably high level ones.

Unlocked my last missions today, now I can actually go wherever I want anywhere. Still have 12 missions left that I haven't finished, 10 on Eris and 2 on Pluto. And at least four of them are defense missions left to do actually, two on Pluto and I think two at Eris, hope one of them is grineer. Would be happy to give those a go and just take them as far as they can be taken with maximized gear. No quitting at wave 5 anymore.

Didn't dare trying to solo the defense missions, depending on the map, it can be a hazard, although me and Grendel took one to wave 5 just to go further on in the pluto map-tree. The other missions that are left start with enemies at lvl 39 or so. Don't know what I would do without the Boltor/akbolto's on those.

So, did anyone get the Vauban systems from the alert earlier today? Saw it in the log when I came home today.

Didn't dare trying to solo the defense missions, depending on the map, it can be a hazard, although me and Grendel took one to wave 5 just to go further on in the pluto map-tree.

I've done defense with just me and a single pubbie to 10 a couple of times on lower-level worlds. One player aggressively hunting the outside and one holding the objective can work fairly well if you're both on the ball.

Didn't dare trying to solo the defense missions, depending on the map, it can be a hazard, although me and Grendel took one to wave 5 just to go further on in the pluto map-tree.

Its easy with Nyx

Guess who FINALLY hit rank 8? Me! Prolly had 10 or more failed attempts but finally got it. Got enough points that I'm ready now for the rank 9 test. Which according to the wiki, is the exact same test. Arg!

Didn't dare trying to solo the defense missions, depending on the map, it can be a hazard, although me and Grendel took one to wave 5 just to go further on in the pluto map-tree.

I've done defense with just me and a single pubbie to 10 a couple of times on lower-level worlds. One player aggressively hunting the outside and one holding the objective can work fairly well if you're both on the ball.

Depends on the map, but I can solo some to wave 5, depending on what frame and equipment I have on. I won't be able to do it without modded up equipment, though.

I've basically be using my platinum only for slots for frames and weapons, and potatoes to supercharge them. I plan to continue doing that, so at 20 plat each or so, it should last me a good long while. I'm not comfortable with buying a frame for 15 to 25 dollars each. That's ridiculous.

I still think if they lowered prices to something more impulse level, like a few dollars for a frame or new weapon, they'd get more money through increased sales. I don't know what that'd do to the 'longevity' of the game, but keeping people playing while they don't buy anything isn't going to make the game profitable. I think they're floating along on founder money right now, and I think that's going to dry up soon. That's probably why they're pushing more and more toward the cash shop for stuff.

If you want to solo for common mods and alloy plate, Aphrodite on Venus is a great place to go. It's easy enough to do even with low-ranked equipment, it's a raid so you're guaranteed a mod, and you can usually get 5 mods or so, plus some plate, every run. It's not as good as a defense mission, but you don't need any help to do it.

As an aside, I suggest running private games rather than solo. Why? The stalker, who gives you nothing if you defeat him, is much more common in solo games, but private games don't come up as solo so he doesn't appear that often. If he does appear, jump on a box and shoot him to death, don't try to out-melee him. One slash dash and he'll put you on the ground, most likely. That always means a revive with him, because he kills you rather than just putting you down, even in coop. He is a rather cool concept, though.

I'm also one Frost Systems BP from moving forward on a Frost frame. Not sure I need it since I'll likely want the frost prime , but whatever. If it's like excalibur prime, the additional affinity on a slot will mess the frame up. Frost is just about mandatory for later stage defense missions, apparently, because of snowglobe.

If you want to solo for common mods and alloy plate, Aphrodite on Venus is a great place to go. It's easy enough to do even with low-ranked equipment, it's a raid so you're guaranteed a mod, and you can usually get 5 mods or so, plus some plate, every run. It's not as good as a defense mission, but you don't need any help to do it.

Do you usually kill everything and open every locker? I've settled into doing defense (Kiste or Xini) missions when I need mods or Plate/Rubedo and Raid when I need money. I usually raid Nakki on Sedna or Nuovo on Ceres with Loki and run through as absolutely fast as possible, which is normally about 2 minutes from start to end. There are higher level raids on Eris but they're all Infested and I like the predictability of Grineer raids.

Depends on the map, but I can solo some to wave 5, depending on what frame and equipment I have on. I won't be able to do it without modded up equipment, though.

^^^ This

I tried it, and I don't have any doubts I could do it if you get the same map as Venus/Venera, no matter which level, but when I tried it on one of either Eris or the Pluto maps, I got the reactor core in a cave with grineer. Which means roller balls that comes close, and standoffish guys that hang back and shoot the reactor. That's where the bulk of the rhino is a disadvantage, because as soon as I move out to kill grineer hanging back, they pop up somewhere else and shoot the reactor. With Ash I could run around and kill stuff, but with Rhino, I just don't get there fast enough.